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The B.C. New Democratic Party was still in shock back in August when North Vancouver councillor Craig Keating announced he would seek the party presidency as a candidate of change and renewal.

“I’m still reeling from our historic defeat in the May election,” wrote Keating in an open letter to party members, at a time when neither the incumbent president Moe Sihota nor party leader Adrian Dix had indicated any plans to take the fall for said electoral loss.

“The members I’ve talked to this summer have been very keen to see some substantial change in how we move in the party,” Keating observed. “Arguably that means the personalities that are involved.”

Eventually, Dix and Sihota both did get the message. As for Keating, his decision to position himself as the candidate of change paid off at the party convention in Vancouver Sunday, when he handily won the presidency.

Keating took 485 votes to 303 for Jagrup Brar, the former MLA who jumped into the presidential contest just two weeks ago, after hesitating through much of the fall.

All other elected positions on the executive were acclaimed to members of a self-styled unity slate, and if they are to fulfil that slogan, they’ve got their work cut out for them.

One got a good sense of the divisions that continue to simmer below the surface of the party during a briefing Sunday morning from Gerard Janssen, the former MLA and cabinet minister who has been chairing the party oversight committee.

Janssen was at his bluntly unmistakable best as he chronicled the difficulties endured by himself and two other committee members in fulfilling their role as watchdog to a party leadership that didn’t much like being watched or barked at.

Noting that all three were coming to the end of their service with this convention, Janssen said “we wish our replacements well and that they have a better time of it than we did.”

He also surprised some delegates with the news that the unfinished business on the docket of the oversight committee included “four complaints from members about certain MLAs in respect of former leader Carole James’ decision to resign in 2010.”

James resigned, it will be recalled, after an ugly open revolt by a so-called baker’s dozen worth of MLAs, many of them still active in party affairs, some of them among the prominent backers of Brar’s bid for the presidency.

“The B.C. NDP president put those complaints into abeyance,” Janssen reported. “ The committee recommends that complaints to the president be dealt with in a timely fashion.”

This proved to be too much for one delegate who went to the microphone to demand that Sihota explain himself. He did so after a fashion, saying the complaints about disloyalty to James were filed at a time of division within the party, hence consigning them to limbo “was the best political outcome.”

Besides, added Sihota, the party constitution mandates no specific time frame for the president to handle any complaints that come across his desk.

Janssen wasn’t finished delivering unsettling news for delegates: “During the last campaign, the budget set for the election was exceeded without due diligence or enabling authorization of the appropriate bodies under the constitution of the B.C. NDP.

“It is clear that the rules for the expenditure of monies during the election period must be tightened and be made up front and disclosed to the appropriate party body promptly.”

Elsewhere in the convention reports, delegates learned that despite the party having raised $17 million over the past two years, it nevertheless ended the election almost $2 million in debt.

That money will need to be repaid, plus interest, before the party can begin building a war chest for the next election. Plus some big cheques will need to be written to fund a much-needed modernization of the party’s campaign apparatus. Nor can much be done in the way of fundraising with a spent force like Dix as leader.

Keating, in his first press conference as president Sunday, was asked when the date might be set for a leadership convention.

He suggested there was no big rush and guessed the party’s governing council (an unwieldy body that includes the party executive as well as representatives for each of the 85 constituency associations) would get around to it later this year or early next.

Whereupon the council promptly second-guessed him and set the date for the convention, next September. Welcome to the B.C. NDP, Mr. President.

In putting off the vote for the better part of a year, the party is presumably hoping to attract a broader field of candidates than was on display at the convention.

Mike Farnworth, playing it as cautiously as can be — he didn’t go to the microphones once during the convention — remains the candidate to beat, presuming he announces his intention to run, as he is expected to do early in the new year.

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Vaughn Palmer: Divisions still haunt B.C. NDP

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